THE Tesla to lay off more than 10% of its workforce worldwide, according to an internal company memo seen by Reuters, as it struggles to counter declining sales amid an intensifying price war for electric vehicles.

The world’s largest automaker by market value was in December 2023 a total of 140,473 employees, as can be seen from the latest annual figures it has announced. The memo did not specify how many jobs would be affected.

“As we prepare the company for our next phase of growth, it is extremely important that we look at every side of the company for cost reductions and productivity gains,” says Tesla’s CEO in an internal memo Elon Musk.

“As part of this effort, we have done a thorough inspection of the organization and we made the difficult decision to reduce the number of employees by more than 10% worldwide,” he adds.

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tesla’s stock price fell 0.3% today in pre-open Wall Street trading.